Black Holes and Dark Knights
by wouldtheywriteasongforyou
Summary: First came the philosophical introspective stage; then the on-top-of-the-world invincible feeling where your luck was it its peak; and then the paralysis stage where the luck would ebb away from your bones and time had to intervene again so that your impracticable luckiness would mesh back in with reality. / in which Narcissa uses liquid luck only to find love a little too late.


**Author's Note:  
Disclaimer: Space. The final frontier. This is not the voyage of the Starship Enterprise. This ship has never sailed (but I really kind of want it to :)  
**

Written for the 24 Hour Pairing Challenge "Barty Crouch Jr/Narcissa"; the Star Challenge "Bellatrix"; Cinema Competition "There's Something About Mary" (losing touch with someone); Star Light, Star Bright Challenge "White Dwarf" (someone's loss) ; Gemstone Competition "emerald"

Word Count: 1,364

**She had a terrible habit of running away from life.**

* * *

**Black Holes and Dark Knights**

[-]

They were both legacies of too-important people. She was a self-absorbed flower amongst cold-hearted stars; he, a failed copy of an office-obsessed father. As a result, she despised being grounded and craved the air and sky. She longed for the day when her name would go up in flaming star-dusted lights and crown the heavens with a new constellation.

He demanded attention too but in less flamboyant ways: a little Dark Arts prank here, a little breaking Magical Enforcement laws there. When he was younger, it had been a harmless game of toeing the line between wrong and right. Now, however, he no longer openly idolised or feared his strict rule-abiding father. He saw the world as something to manipulate as he pleased, and oh, did Barty Crouch Junior abuse that privilege.

They knew each other's names before they had even met. He had heard of that meadow springtime flower that blossomed in happy colours. He couldn't fathom how something could be so bright and cheerfully golden all of the time. She too had heard of that Crouch boy who lived in his father's shadow and never tilted his head to face the sun. She didn't understand why he would not step out of the darkness and soak himself in the light.

But they were both Purebloods of the same generation, and with the age-old traditions set in stone, it was literally written in the stars that they would collide briefly before spinning away from each other in their separate orbits.

[-]

She had a terrible habit of running away from life. In the metaphorical sense, she would zone out whenever her parents tried to preach their high-society politics to her yet again. As a female, she had absolutely no rights and no independence which didn't quite sit well with her headstrong nature. In the literal sense, however, she did run away from the noble House of Black many times in her youth. When she reached seventeen years of age, there was nothing her parents could do to stop her from Apparating away whenever she craved ozone in her lungs and diamond dust on her tongue.

It was during one of these escapades that Narcissa found herself in Knockturn Alley breathing out secrets to the lights of the streetlamps as if they were wishing stars. Her eyes were as dark and heavy-lidded as Bella's typically were, and her pupils were wide and dilated. The rain was misting and off-setting the harsh lines of reality into a hazy softer illusion. Narcissa felt like she was dissolving into a pile of molecules that were no longer bound together by her DNA.

"_Felix felicis_ will do that to a person," a shadow said to her.

She blinked – time seemed to stand still as she did so and she was able to count every single blonde eyelash as her eyelid swept over her vision – and tried to pinpoint her guest. "Hello?" she called out uncertainly.

"You have quite a lot of darkness inside of you for someone who paints a sunny smile on her face all of the time," the shadow replied. A ghost of a breath passed over Narcissa's neck, prickling the hairs there. She tried to twirl around to see whoever was speaking to her but her feet felt like they were stuck in quicksand and time was drowning her with each passing moment.

"Who are you?"

"You know who I am."

Narcissa closed her eyes, for time had started once more but now it was in fast-forward and everything was a blur of nauseating psychedelic colours. She concentrated on the dips and swells of his voice. The cryptic vagueness and the cynical drawl . . . a carbon copy image of the Ministry official Barty Crouch popped into her mind but that wasn't the right person, Narcissa knew. Her visitor had the jaded edge of a younger soul.

"How long have you been there?" she asked softly, dreading the answer.

"Before you sipped the vial the peddler gave you," he responded. "What were you thinking, drinking an unnamed potion that a stranger had given you?"

"I wasn't thinking," she stated. "And perhaps I had wanted to take a risk and gamble my life."

He melted out of the shadows and stood in front of her close enough to touch. "You're lucky that wasn't the Draught of Living Death."

Her lips quirked upwards into a cheeky smile at his comment. "Of course I'm lucky – I just drank pure liquid luck, Bart." She peeked through her lashes at him in time to see him roll his dark eyes before glancing around in the gloom.

"Knockturn Alley isn't safe anymore, Black. You should go home."

"Oh, don't act like you care about me, Bart," she scoffed, unconsciously taking a step backwards. "It contradicts your tough-as-teflon reputation."

His jaw tightened and his arm shot out to grab her elbow and keep her in place. "How sheltered have your parents kept you?" he growled. "The Dementors will be out tonight, Black, and this is the first place they will come to. If you know what's best, you'd leave before one of them tries to Kiss you."

Narcissa hated to be told what to do (that happens when you're Bellatrix's younger sister) and despised the patronising tone Barty Crouch Junior was using with her. "My parents tell me too much," she hissed back. "They've told me all about the Dark traditions of our family and the arranged marriages and the Dark Lord. I just want to un-know all of it and forget the atrocious acts they have committed!"

"So you thought you would willingly come out here and volunteer yourself as victim to a Dementor's Kiss."

Her gaze dropped to the cobblestone ground she was standing on, and her hands reached up to fiddle with the hem of her satin black robes. "I've been told that I am to be engaged this autumn to a Death Eater," she murmured. "Lucius Malfoy."

"I see."

But Narcissa knew that Barty really didn't understand the gravity of the situation. He wasn't a Pureblood girl – there was no way he could know how marriage shackled a female to her husband and imprisoned her within an inescapable glass world of wealth and loneliness.

"I wish it were you," she said to her childhood best friend, the _Felix felicis_ giving her the courage of a lion for a tiny second.

Barty jerked his gaze in her direction. "And what difference would that make?" he asked sharply.

_All the difference in the world_, Narcissa wanted to say but her mouth wouldn't form the words.

"Don't worry; it'll pass," Barty assured her gruffly, for she was simply going through the predictable stages a dose of _Felix felicis_ gave its user. First came the philosophical introspective stage; then the on-top-of-the-world invincible feeling where your luck was it its peak; and then the paralysis stage where the luck would ebb away from your bones and time had to intervene again so that your impracticable luckiness would mesh back in with reality. "I've got to get going, anyway. Promise me to never go near the Dementors and that you'll make it back to the House of Black before half past ten tonight? The Dementors come out at eleven."

Externally she nodded, but internally she was screaming and pleading with him to stay. She had one last thing she wanted to tell him before –

_Pop!_ And he was gone.

She let out a gasp as the world began to spin on its axis again, and reached out in vain for him even though all she touched was the hungry vortex of shadowy darkness.

"Maybe I did come out here for a kiss," she whispered. "But not from a Dementor."

[-]

That autumn, she became Mrs Lucius Malfoy. She smiled prettily and tried her hardest to be the best wife for him. The only time she betrayed her perfect Pureblood façade was when she found out that Barty Crouch Junior had been sent to Azkaban for supporting the Dark Lord.

She cried but did not visit Barty while he was there because he had made her promise once long ago to never go near the Dementors.

[-]


End file.
